ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Brief summary: Villanueva-Carmona et al. identified succinate as a mediating metabolite in leptin secretion. Its action is mediated by the succinate receptor SUCNR in adipocytes via the circadian clock in an AMPK/JNK-C/EBPa-dependent manner.Although the regulatory circuits of leptin action on hunger and satiety are well understood, the pathways that mediate acute leptin production in the adipose tissue are less investigated. To investigate how a...

Brief summary: This collaborative study identified 13 monoallelic rare loss-of-function (LoF) variants in the serotonin 2C receptor (HTR2C) gene in 19 unrelated individuals with hyperphagia, severe early-onset obesity, and some degree of maladaptive behaviour. The authors used exome sequencing in 2548 individuals with severe obesity and 1117 control individuals without obesity. They found that HTR2C variants cause monogenic obesity by demonstrating t...

To read the full abstract: Nat Genet 2017;49:1231-1238This large international initiative is a major collaboration across 25 research institutes that was set up as part of the scientific community’s response to concerns regarding the notoriously poor reproducibility of scientific research. Up to now, many mouse gene knock-outs have been made and reported, but inconsistency between finding...

To read the full abstract: J Am Soc Nephrol. 2017 Aug;28(8):2529-2539The association of hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia (HH) and polycystic kidneys has not been reported before. Here, the authors studied 17 patients from 11 different families and found that all patients had a combination HH and polycystic kidneys. The HH was mild and some patients required diazoxide therapy. In contrast the poly...

JCI Insight. 2020 Oct 27;5(23):e134310. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.134310. PMID: 33108146.Lodge et al. screened 28 patients with pituitary stalk interruption syndrome (PSIS) for mutations in the FAT/DCHS (FAT atypical cadherin/ Dachsous cadherin-related) family of protocadherins. FAT2 and DCHS2 putative damaging variants were found in 6/28 patients with ectopic ...

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2021 Jan 23;106(2):351–363. doi: 10.1210/clinem/dgaa857. PMID: 33236116.Here, the authors report the long−term outcomes of all 17 known, well−investigated cases of pituitary blastoma. The median age at diagnosis was 11 months, and the most frequent presentations were Cushing syndrome (n=10), cranial nerve palsies including ophthalmoplegia (...

EMBO Rep. 2020;21:e50612. doi: 10.15252/embr.202050612.This zebrafish study identified and molecularly characterized adult transcriptionally different thyrocyte subpopulations even within the same follicle.It is well established that within a thyroid gland, follicles are heterogenous concerning functional activity. More active follicles are characterized by a high co...

Thyroid. 2020;30:1732–1744. doi: 10.1089/thy.2019.0825.This study is of importance, revealing a relevant clinical problem in patients under long-term levothyroxine (LT4) substitution and challenging the concept that all hypothyroid patients can be well controlled with LT4 monotherapy.Lacámara et al. present a small but elegant clinical study describi...

Clin Genet. 2020 Oct;98(4):402–407. 10.1111/cge.13816. PMID: 32683677.This short report describes two 46,XY siblings of consanguineous parents manifesting a complex syndrome consisting of multiple dysmorphic features including growth and developmental retardation, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal and cardiac anomalies, as well as ambiguous genitalia (non-palpable testes, micropenis, und...

Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 9; 10: 21507. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33299020/This cross-sectional study of 246 childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cALL) survivors aimed to analyze the relationships between various blood biomarkers and cardiovascular risk, and to test the link between endotoxemia and cardiometabolic complications. A high leptin-adiponectin ratio was associated with obesity, ...